Over the past few months, the Hello Cool World team has had the privilege of working with the First Nations Technology Council - an organization dedicated to building capacity and increasing accessibility to technology for First Nations communities throughout British Columbia. We're thrilled that the Technology Council has come on board as a community partner for our book 'Picturing Transformation, Nexw'ayantsut' which they have featured on their portal site.

Our work with FNTC began when we were invited to the #STRONG2013 conference back in May, where we did media engagement (i.e tweeting, blogging and posting to Facebook!) a photoshoot and video interviews. We produced three short films out of the conference footage we shot, that describe FNTC's goals.

I've been really amazed to see the innovative ways that technology is being used to preserve language and culture. The issues of language and culture have been in the media lately, with the ongoing Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commissions that are happening all around the country. The Commission is mandated to facilitate healing across the country, from the scars of the Indian Residential School system, in which the government forcibly removed First Nations children from their homes and forced them into schools, where they were assimilated, and where Aboriginal language and culture was illegal.

David Ng is a Hello Cool World veteran with experience going back a decade. David first worked with us when he was just 14 years old as a participant in the youth advisory group for the sexual health education program Condomania. Now an accomplished videographer passionate about the issues of gender and power, he is currently on sabbatical in South Africa while he pursues a Masters in Gender Studies with a focus on international development.

Guest Blogger Mike Jacko has joined the team from the Circles of Understanding project. HCW Is thrilled to have his help with the conference and to be working with him on the new COU project too. Here's his panorama pic of the tweet team in action!

LIGHTS! CAMERA! TWITTER!

The Hello Cool World team has been full-on tweeting, and filming the confernce! Many interviews have been done, and many are still to come tomorrow! Saw an iphone on a tripod, went to the Indigitization workshop, learnt about some of the challenges of entering into the digital world, checked out the Online Safety workshop, and also checked out Cross-media Story-telling workshop facilitated by the amazing Cease Wyss. I also missed several other awesome workshops because they all run at the same time :( The conference has so much information I can barely keep up. Looking forward to the next few days, can't wait to hear more ideas from First Nations people about Indigitizing their communities! Exciting!! - MJ

Hello Cool World is looking for experienced Francophone copywriters with a taste for social justice. We need to communicate with you in English, but we need true word-crafting expertise in French, with a current understanding of Quebec culture.

We need pitch writing, tag lines and ad-style copy for a bilingual non-profit identity project, and we are looking for someone with experience* in these areas, but who wants to use their powers of persuasion for good!

We are well aware that concepts and creative ideas don't all translate directly, and that word crafting takes a certain kind of finesse. We're also a company that is unashamedly go-gooders, and all our clients do meaningful work. For this project, our client is Inter Pares. We've worked with these fine folks several times before, but this time we are being stretched to become a truly bilingual company, and we need to find a person, or people who fit with our sensiblity and that can provide us with some high-level writing in French, that takes into consideration the process we have already undergone so far.

Contact kdodds@hellocoolworld.com by email with your resume if this is you, and give us an example of your copy-writing. Please let us know your hourly freelance rate.

* we are not looking for good writers only, but for people who have done this kind of work specifically, for other clients, and who understand the back-and-forth process that identity work entails.

For some of our work in progress, see the surveys we just launched of logo drafts.

Katherine Dodds AKA "Kat" is the founder of Good Company Communications and HelloCoolWorld.com. Trained in renegade advertising & branding through her work with Adbusters in the '90s, Kat's early induction into the possibilities of the web-world was inspired by the term hypertext, which she immediately found comforting. She is dedicated to cause-related communication and to the development and use of tools that promote democratic processes.

Nimisha Mukerji & Philip Lyall talk docs with Oprah at Sundance

65_RedRoses Filmmakers Nimisha Mukerji & Philip Lyall with Oprah

Vancouver, B.C. – “I didn’t think we’d actually meet her!” said 65_RedRoses director Philip Lyall, “But there she was, the queen of television herself! We talked with her about our film, and about reaching American audiences.” Says director Nimisha Mukerji, “Oprah is passionate about the cause of organ donation, and having her support this film will make all the difference.”

The filmmaker duo was invited by OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network) to do PR for the upcoming launch of their documentary 65_RedRoses on Oprah’s new network this spring. The film follows Canadian Eva Markvoort as she battles Cystic Fibrosis (CF), a fatal genetic disease. The pair couldn’t be more pleased about what this means for their cause and Eva’s -- organ donation.

Says Lyall: “Eva would have been so excited by this broadcast and she would be even more thrilled to realize that this really will be the North American launch of the #4Eva movement for organ donation she dreamed of.” They also met Rosie O'Donnell, who was very moved by Eva's story as her nephew has CF. O’Donnell will be doing the intro and post-broadcast discussion about the film.

“We are committed to building a long-term sustainable movement” adds Mukerji who has been working closely with BC Transplant, Hello Cool World and Force Four Entertainment to build a social media campaign around the film.

Bella is the newest addition to Hello Cool World, enlisting for the cause at the end of 2010. A graduate of BCIT's Broadcast Communications for TV program, she's worked in all aspects of production and has a knack for new media & technology.